posts categorized asContingent Faculty Committee Blog

Members of the contingent faculty committee wrote recently to the president of Barnard College, both applauding the successful contract with the newly organized UAW Local 2110 (representing contingent faculty) and calling for the rehiring of contingent faculty activist Georgette Fleischer.

Legal history and labor law concepts are essential tools for analyzing structures of unionization and collective bargaining, and in developing effective strategies. Reductionism concerning labor law can lead to flawed analysis. This powerpoint presentation briefly reviews the history and concepts, and provides fresh data regarding new faculty and student employee unionization, and strikes (Powerpoint, 17-28).

A group of Yale graduate students are protesting their labor conditions as teachers. They are demanding the administration recognize them as a union and negotiate their contract as full employees of the university. After all, graduate students teach many undergraduate classes.

The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, Hunter College, City University of New York, invites scholars and practitioners from multiple disciplines to submit abstracts of proposed papers, panels, and interactive workshops for our 45th annual conference.

Yale continues to evade its legal responsibility to bargain with the legally certified union representing graduate teachers at Yale. Since April 25, the fast by graduate teachers and their occupation at Beinecke Plaza has continued as well.

Two weeks ago, Yale graduate student teachers began a hunger strike to pressure the school to negotiate with their union. Eight committed to fasting, planning only to stop if a doctor says their health is at risk of permanent damage. If a student has to stop fasting, another union member takes his or her spot.

We are pleased to announce the addition of a new panel to examine the issue of unemployment eligibility for adjunct faculty and the significance of the new guidance issued by the United States Department of Labor. The panel will include speakers Jason Myers, Chief Administrative Law Judge, New York State Unemployment Appeals Board, Nancy Cross, SEIU Local 1 Vice President, Louis P.

LAWCHA member William Herbert, the Executive Director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, has just published an important article on collective bargaining in higher education. See “The Winds of Changes Shift: An Analysis of recent Growth in Bargaining Units and Representation Efforts in Higher Education,” which appears in the recent issue of the Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy.

On January 12, 2017, faculty unions representing community and technical college faculty across Washington state got their allies in the Washington state legislature to introduce HB 1168, a law that would compel the state’s community and technical colleges to ensure that seventy percent of their faculty will be on the tenure track by 2023.

In this issue: Dr. Martin Luther King on the Purpose of Education, National Center’s 2017 Annual Conference registration, Interactive Training Workshops, Collective Bargaining and Unionization at Private Sector Institutions, and more!